At the end of 2018 I lost my wife of 30 years to cancer.
Allyson was my world. We got together when we were teenagers, moved to the other side of the globe, had two kids, moved back to the UK, had another kid, then settled in to subvert the suburban dream as much as was practical.
And then Allyson got ill.
She had cancer.
She got treatment and got better and then she got worse, better and worse, better and worse.
And then Allyson died.
“What’s the point of me without you?”
Everything I do on Mendable Me is about trying to make sense of Allyson dying.
I write here so that I don’t forget.
I hope my writing might give a little comfort to readers living their own loss, but mostly I’m trying to understand the point of me without Allyson.
Why Mendable?
After Allyson died I was pretty broken.
But I remembered, when I asked her what was the point of me without her, she answered without missing a beat, “Your kids”.
And she told me I would meet someone else. And I have.
Those two things showed me that as broken as I felt, I was mendable. I first heard that strange, perfect, word mendable in a song by a brilliant band from County Durham. I’ve never felt so seen.
“Oh my heart I try to keep it open
Oh my heart I try to keep it full
There’s a world outside where I feel so broken
But you make me feel mendable.”
Six Men Getting Sick Six Times (Mendable), Martha